China Ending Tax Breaks For Polluters

The Chinese premier pledged Friday to phase out tax breaks and discounts on land and electricity for highly polluting industries, saying the country's environmental situation was grim and required urgent action.

China is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, which are blamed for damaging the ozone layer and contributing to global warming.
The country had been forecast to surpass the U.S. as the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases in 2010, but its economic growth has pushed the date forward, according to the head of the International Energy Agency. The prediction has refocused attention on China's pollution policies and its contribution to global warming.

China's three-decade economic boom has left its waterways and coastlines severely polluted by industrial and farm chemicals and domestic sewage. Its countryside is littered with garbage and construction waste, and its cities suffocated by smog.

Wen said the government would "clean up and rectify preferential policies that give land and electricity discounts or tax breaks to energy intensive or highly polluting industries.''
Policies vary widely from place to place, but China's local governments routinely offer free or cut-rate real estate and utilities to developers looking to set up lucrative businesses, such as steel mills or chemical plants. Tax breaks are also used to lure potential investors.


SOURCE:
LiveScience.com

It really does boggle my mind that this has even been allowed in the
first place, tax breaks to polluters I mean.

At least though they are ending it, or more accurately, trying to end it,
while they fail to meet there own energy and environmental goals,
but it is good that they are not just ignoring it, or worse encouraging it.

I give them C+ for effort.


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